To better fulfill its mission of “design for the greater good in our shared future” and more effectively leverage charity and donations to boost design education in China, last September C Foundation, together with A Better Community (ABC) and after combing through its developments over the past six years, considering views of various partners, conducting in-depth research of the industry and counterpart organizations and being informed by multiple rounds of discussions between the Board of Directors and the Secretariat, finally proposed a five-year strategy of “creating a platform empowering and grooming young designers” that focuses on design students and working young designers.

At such an opportune time, the strategic project C Foundation Camp (the camp) was born. The camp will bring together teachers, C Foundation volunteers, industry experts, philanthropic enterprises and C Foundation Directors, who will help students learn from the whole process from design to implementation in fieldwork-based projects addressing social issues. In this way, young designers bring into play their abilities and make their contribution through coordinating teachers, students and the consultant team. Students and young designers are the future of Chinese design. C Foundation hopes that the camp can engage various parties in the society and create broader space for students and designers to fulfill their potential. Hopefully, the awareness of “design for the greater good” can be instilled into them and inform their choice of and thought about every idea, every stroke of drawing and every brick and tile.

C Foundation strives to make the model mature and replicable in the third year based on vigorous exploration and solid execution in the first year, and then in the fifth year build the camp into a platform that empowers and benefits young designers with five years of fieldwork outcomes and experience.

Model adopted for innovative charity projects of the camp

Recruitment of teams (2 teams) – fieldwork – completion of architectural/ indoor design – construction and acceptance – assessment and tracking

The camp plans to publicly recruit online one vocational college and one undergraduate-education university each year and provide them with funding, technological and charity work support over three years and ask the college and university teachers to lead students to carry out field design activities that concern some social issues. Throughout the process, young designer volunteers and Directors of C Foundation, enterprises and industry experts would act as facilitators that provide the teachers and students with necessary assistance and guidance. The camp has designed the “C Foundation Fieldwork Class” program, which will invite working designers, entrepreneurs and industry experts to deliver speeches and share practical knowledge that cannot be gained from books. Held monthly and both online and offline, the class will help students acquire more professional knowledge and broaden their horizon about the society.

Recruitment:

Public recruitment of one vocational college and one undergraduate-education university a year

Practices:

Field design practices and activities concerning social issues

Duration of support:

Three years for every college and university

Forms of support:

Funding + technological and charity work support over 3 years

An important task for 2021 is to consolidate the achievements of poverty alleviation and fully advance rural area revitalization. In this context, the first phase of the camp is placed in the beautiful Xiuwu of Henan province where the Rural Aesthetics Base, a project jointly built by Xiuwu, Youcheng Foundation and C Foundation, has also been officially inaugurated.

College of Design, Shenzhen University and School of Art and Design, Shenzhen Polytechnic react warmly to and support the 2021 camp and are the first to join it. The two institutions will innovatively explore new models of fieldwork-based teaching together with C Foundation in the three years to come.

We look forward to working with C Foundation partners, teachers and students and young designers to unleash kindness through design.

Design for good together!